GOOGLE DEVELOPING CUSTOM SOC

Google Only Chromebooks Due to Arrive Circa 2023

LIKE OTHER high-tech giants, Google is working on its own custom systemon-chips (SoCs) that will power PCs and tablets running Chrome OS. These SoCs are projected to offer capabilities not available on chips used by today’s Chromebooks and are likely to make such machines more competitive.

Google’s SoCs for Chromebooks and tablets will be based on ARM architecture, Nikkei reports. It’s unclear whether the search giant will develop its own microarchitecture, or use ARM’s off-the-shelf Cortex cores. The company intends to roll out its first SoCs for PCs in 2023, but it’s not clear which custom features Google intends to add to its SoCs to differentiate them from those developed by companies such as MediaTek or Qualcomm.

Apple was among the first tech firms to build SoCs for smartphones and tablets in 2010. In 2020, it announced plans to stop using Intel CPUs and introduced its M1 SoC to power lightweight laptops. It seems Google now wants to follow suit.

Development of chips is expensive. A complex 5nm design costs over $500 million to develop, but at 3nm, development costs will rise to $1.5 billion, so Google will need to sell a lot of Chromebooks.

Google has been using its own SoCs to accelerate AI workloads in its datacenters since 2016. Last year, it used its Argos video transcoding units ( VCUs) to transcode YouTube videos and hired an Intel veteran to develop custom SoCs for its datacenters with the intention of replacing machines based on Intel CPUs. Google confirmed that its Pixel 6 smartphones will be based on its internally designed SoCs.